Chapter XXIV: The Battle

It was now three o'clock in the morning. In about half an hour the men, naturally grumbling and protesting at being deprived of any of their sleep, were out and at work. Lanterns were lighted everywhere. The rain had fortunately not resumed, and the air was soon filled with noise and confusion. Men with axes were busy on the hillside cutting the young pines. Horses, which would have protested as much as the men had they been able, were hitched to the dump wagons, the steam shovel began tearing away the hillside. Some of the men were detailed to knock down some of the galvanized iron houses and the battering of the hammers on the metal added to the din.

Under Vandeventer's personal direction a row of stakes was driven into the top of the dam about three feet from the front of it. He had intended to put the stakes a foot apart, but he decided that in the emergency he would not have time for so close a palisade, and therefore they were placed about two feet from one another. There were only about one hundred and fifty men working on the dam, and there was a limit even to what the hardiest and most desperate worker could do.

Big sheets of overlapping galvanized iron were nailed roughly to the fronts of the firmly bedded stakes and the small branches and brushwood were thrown down before it. There were a great many small bowlders and big stones which had accumulated during the excavations and these were carried out on the dam in the wagons and thrown down on the brushwood so as to bind the improvised mat of branches into a sort of revetment; spare timbers, broken wagon beds, old wheels, joists of dismembered houses were driven into the earth to serve as braces behind the palisade; but the main support of this wooden wall, with its skirmish line of frail brushwood, was a bank of earth which was piled up behind it, on which every man, even the chiefs themselves, who could be spared from other tasks labored with breathless energy. The water was still rising, although the rain had stopped; the natural drainage would cause that, but the rise was slower.

At dawn Vandeventer personally carefully measured the depth of the water and gauged it again. It was a scant six and a half feet below the top of the dam. At daylight the palisade at which they had worked so hard in the darkness showed its flimsy front to all. It was a desperate expedient. That, the least intelligent workman could see. If the water rose above the top of the dam it was gravely questionable whether the palisade would hold it at all, yet there was no other way of increasing the depth of the spill-way enough to discharge the flood volume.

Working as hard as they could, they had barely succeeded in raising the earth bank back of it a foot high. They kept at it unremittingly, although it did not seem to be of much use. Vandeventer, Stafford and Meade gathered together and scanned the sky, seeking to discern the signs of the time, the purpose of the heavens. It was clearer in the east. The clouds to the northwestward were in violent action apparently. Lightning flashed through them and over the great range itself; low muttered peals of thunder came down from the peaks lost to sight in the blackness overhead. They observed all this carefully and Vandeventer turned away, shaking his head.

"I don't know," he began--the three of them were over on the east side the better to see up the valley--"it looks pretty bad, doesn't it?"

"It does," answered Meade, while Stafford nodded his head.

"And, by the way, Stafford, have you notified the town and the bridge people of the danger and bid them prepare for it?"

"I tried to telephone them awhile ago, but the connection has been broken; the storm has played havoc with the line probably," answered the assistant engineer.

"Well, what did you do, then?" asked Vandeventer a little imperatively.

"I sent a man down on horseback in a hurry to warn them that if it rains again the dam might go, and if it did it would go with a rush; that the water was now only six feet below the level and that they had better get up on the hills. Of course, last night's rain must have made the road almost impassable, but he ought to get there by nine o'clock. I told him to tell the Martlet people to take whatever steps they could devise to hold their viaduct and their machinery," answered Stafford, as he turned and walked toward his own part of the dam.

"Good," exclaimed Vandeventer. "There's nothing left for us to do but keep on."

The resident engineer looked white and haggard. Although it was cold and raw in the wet air he wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"The men are doing splendidly, sir," said Meade.

"Yes," said Vandeventer, "many of them have their wives and children back in the town. Some of the Italians have bought land on the prairie and are going to settle here. They're fighting for everything they've got on earth. What do you think of the chances of this palisade of ours?"

Meade shook his head.

"You want a frank opinion?"

"Of course. What else?"

"It wouldn't hold an hour."

"That's right, and yet it's all we can do."

"That hour might save the dam, though."

"Doubtful," said Vandeventer gloomily.

"It's all we can do, as you say, sir, but if the water rises more than seven or eight feet----"

"Say it," said Vandeventer.

"The dam would go like a house of cards."

"Exactly. And look at that cloudbank over there in the northwest. It's spreading."

"What wind there is," said Meade, moistening his finger and holding it up to feel the direction, "is blowing the opposite way down here, but you can't tell what is happening up there. Well, all we can do is to fight on."

And fight they did. It was almost at first sight like the hand of man against the hand of God. There was no more room for science, no more room for engineering expedient. It was chop and hew, break and pound, dig and drive, carry and pile. Throwing off his coat, Vandeventer seized a spade and began to work like any other laborer, and the rest of the higher men followed his example.

At six o'clock the blackness hanging in the northwest began to turn their way. It was coming down the mountain. It was headed for the valley. Vandeventer saw it, every teamster, every common laborer saw it. It was coming. Unless heaven itself interfered there would be more rain. They had worked desperately before, but now they applied themselves to their tasks with a kind of wild fury. A sort of insanity took possession of them. They would not be beaten. They cried, at first shrilly and then hoarsely and raucously, encouraging words and phrases from one to another; terse, vivid, profane, desperate. They stood there and they heaved and dug and piled and hammered and hurled and drove fiercely. It was a battle madness that came into them. They saw red like the berserker of old. Yes, it was not unlike a battle in other ways, for with the rush of the northwest storm came roaring mighty thunder and vivid and terrifying lightning. It was as if great darts of light literally were hurled by some gigantic hand behind the black screen of sweeping cloud down upon the granite mountains. They saw splinters of fire where the thunderbolts struck. The pealing of thunder was appalling.

Their frail palisade backing was not half completed. It must be raining somewhere, for the water was still slowly rising. It was five and a half feet now from the crest. It was hopeless if another rain fell, and the rain was coming. There was an added chill in the still air of the valley as the storm drove down upon them. A few of the fainter hearts flung down pick and shovel and axe and stood craven. Oaths, curses, blows even, from those of the braver sort shamed them into work again. These brave hearts and true might be swept away with the dam if it gave way, but they would not give up, and no man working with them should flee his task or shirk his duty. By the Living God, whose sport and playthings they seemed to be, they swore it; and so weak and strong, bold and timid labored on--desperate, resolved, god-like in their courage and persistence.

The clouds were moving swiftly now. To the east it had been clear, but now it was also black, and then with a roar greater even than a thousand thunderclaps the wind tore down the mountains, through the narrow cañons, into the valleys, shrieking in the pines, and fell upon them and hurled them down and brushed them back. And after the wind, the rain. A drop or two struck Vandeventer's cheek; another, another, and then the flood. He lifted his head and stared and shook his fist at the sky and turned to the human termites he commanded.

"Carry on, carry on, boys," he cried, shrieking to be heard above the thunder peals, "we'll beat it yet."

A cheer rose about him and was caught up and ran along the top of the great dam. The half-maniacal yell was such a cry as men might give vent to in the heat of battle, the excitement of wild charge, and then they fell to it again. The more ignorant, unaware of the feebleness of the palisade, the more knowing indifferent to it, seeing only the job, alike realized only their duty to fight on, to answer the appeal to their manhood, to refuse to admit defeat even when life trembled in the balance.

Yes, to use the ancient simile again, the fountains of the great deep were broken open. What had befallen them before was nothing to this. The hard rain of the night seemed trifling compared to this avalanche of water. This was a cloudburst indeed. And to make it worse, to make their task harder, to render their efforts useless, the high wind roaring down the valley piled the water up and drove it in thunderous assaulting waves against the great mound of earth on which the men struggled and labored frantically. Vandeventer, shovel in hand--he did not dare to throw it down, lest his action be misconstrued,--went from gang to gang, from man to man, talking to them, appealing to them, pointing out weaknesses here and there, inspiring them, holding them up as a man might hold a stricken line against the onslaught of a victorious and overwhelming force. And against wind and rain in that thick darkness, blinded by the flashing lightning, stunned by the pealing thunder, with zeal superhuman they toiled on and on and on.

Back and forth went the chief, showing himself a leader of leaders, and wherever he stopped the fury and desperation of the effort to stem the tide increased. When he came plodding along the muddy roadway to the part committed to Meade he did not find the engineer.

"Where's Roberts?" he yelled above the noise of the storm.

"He and two men have gone, sir."

"Gone?" cried Vandeventer, cut to the heart at what he thought was a desertion. "Well," he shouted, realizing there was nothing he could do then and that he had neither breath nor time to waste, "there's more need for the rest of us to take their places."

He drew a man or two from the other gangs to re-enforce this danger point and himself directed their work.

Now it takes time for water to rise five feet, even in a cloudburst or a succession of them. The rain constantly seemed to increase as the wind drove it on. Vandeventer knew that the dam was doomed, that the sluice and the half-finished spill-way combined could discharge only a small part of the flow, but he knew that he would have two hours at least to work before the water could pass the crest, undermine, and batter down the palisade and begin to trickle over. Just as soon as it did roll over the top, unless they could stop it, the whole thing was gone. For those two hours the supermen labored unremittingly in the downpour with a persistent and heroic courage that should have been recorded in song and story, but which was not. It was remembered after a while by none, save a few. To the many it was only "all in the day's work"!

The under sluice in the side of the dam which would later serve as head gate for the canal had been intended to pass the smaller floods which might occur during the construction and had been open since the rain began. It carried off a great volume of water, but hopelessly little in comparison with the flood. Foot by foot in the torrential downpour the water rose. At half after eight it reached the level of the spill-way and commenced to rush through in ever increasing volume, but the flow into the reservoir was far greater than the spill-way's capacity.

Still the sight of the rushing water encouraged the men. Every one of them felt that if the palisade held the discharge would be increased enough to stop the rise, but at present the effect was small. By nine o'clock it was within a foot of the top. They began to measure its rise by inches. Although the dam had been carefully kept level as it was built, the trample of horses and men, the present digging and palisading and revetting had caused little depressions. Now the water rose to the level. Here and there it began to trickle over!

The rain coming down from the mountain tops was as cold as ice, yet the men were in a fever of excitement. They had got their second wind. They were too enthused, too desperate, to feel their weariness. They had not worked before as they did then. It was the last possible nervous outburst with most of them. They could keep it up a little longer--till they dropped dead. As the mad thoroughbred falls in his stride in the track, pushed beyond his power of endurance, as even the common cart horse can be made to go until he drops, so these men, white, haggard, nervous, drawn-faced, sweat mingling with the rain on their sodden bodies, would go till they broke. They had not quite reached that point yet.

There were some five hundred heavy cement bags which had been filled with sand and piled up on the roadway at convenient points. As a forlorn hope, as a last try, Vandeventer called all the diggers and ditchers, and hewers and drivers, and bade them tackle the sand bags. The timber wall that rose to four or five feet was now packed to a height of three with an unequal wall of earth.

The waves were beginning to roll against the rampart, although their force as yet was broken by the brushwood. Vandeventer jumped up on the palisade near the center. There were some large logs there where he could stand and whence he could get as clear a view of the whole top of the dam as was possible through the driving rain.

"There," shouted the engineer, pointing to a red trickle--it seemed to him like blood, taking its hideous hue from the red clay of the banks--where the water had found a low spot and was washing across the top and trickling through the new wall and down on the other side. Even as he pointed the trickle became a stream and the stream bade fair to be a flood. Men ran and dropped sand bags over in front of the palisade right where the leak had occurred. Other men heaped up the earth behind the wall, seeking to smother it and stop it. The water checked there, they were forced to do the same thing at another place. Desperately they dropped their sand bags, sturdily they plied their shovels in the mud, scrambling and yelling they ran from leak to leak. They lifted the heavy bags of sand as if they had been loaves of bread and jammed them down. They swung pick and shovel like toys, although the rain made all the earth sticky mud and the work all the harder. The water was clear over the top of the dam now and streaming through the revetment of brush and surging against the palisade. Where it did not let the water through, the line of stakes was beginning to bend backward.

The men who had expended their sand bags and could get no more in one final effort ran to the palisade, dug their heels madly in the wet, slimy earth and put their shoulders against the bending stakes as if to hold them up by main strength. Thin streams were flowing here and there, now unheeded. Checked and held in one spot, the water broke through at another. The spill-way could not control the rise.

"She's gone, she's gone. My God!" gasped Vandeventer under his breath. He had fought a good fight. He could do no more. There were no more bags of sand. Save for the men straining at the wall here and there and everywhere, there was left nothing but to stand and wait, having done all. As one man saw another the whole hundred and fifty caught the contagion and threw themselves against the palisade, wet and chilled from the rain, but yet madly, recklessly, Americans and foreigners alike. They would hold it by main strength for another minute, they swore, oblivious to the fact that just as soon as it went it would go with a rush.

The stockade would be swept away first and they would go with it. What of that? The men back of it matched their brawny arms against rain and wind, the powers of man against the powers of God, but not mockingly. It is perhaps doubtful if they realized what they did. It was instinct, habit, blind desperation now. If the flimsy wall failed under the terrific water pressure they would be hurled beneath it, swept down the slope of the dam, buried in the débris as it was swept away, caught up if they by any chance survived so far, and hurled broken and battered down the valley in the terrible flood that would ensue. What did they know about that, or knowing, what did they care, as they strained at the wavering timber wall? And still they held as the rain poured down on them, soaking through their soggy clothes, the colder on their exhausted bodies for the keen wind that blew across them.

Well, they had done everything they could. Vandeventer jumped down and pressed himself against the nearest timber with the men and waited, silent. He had never sustained such a pressure in all his life. Like Atlas, he felt as if he were holding up a world. And the mocking thing about it all was his feeling, nay his realization, that he was not really holding anything, that if the palisades failed, his pressure, his resistance and that of all the other men amounted to nothing. Yet he held on and they, too--demi-gods!